Meeting Susannah
by MmeGray
Summary: Just what was Jesse thinking when he first met Suze? ONESHOT! R&R please!


**Disclaimer: These two wonderful characters, along with her mother and step-father, belong to Meg Cabot, NOT ME!! sob, gasp, sob**

I have been residing in this same room for about one hundred fifty years.

When I died, and no one could see me, I was insecure about myself.

I had gone to the de Silva's ranch, and no one could see me. I tried to inflict bodily harm on Felix Diego when I saw him violating my cousin and ex-fiancée, Maria, but my hand went right through him.

That was when I accepted the fact that I was dead.

A new family is moving into this house. When my door opened, I thought the man who now owned this house was coming in to put in more "feminine charm", as he liked to say to his wife.

But, instead, it was him, his wife, and a girl of about sixteen. She looked my way, as if she could see me, but I was sitting in front of her window, so I assumed she was looking out at Caramel Bay.

It was rather beautiful.

Once her parents left, she hesitated, turned my way again, and said, "All right. Who the hell are you?"

To say I was surprised would have been a large understatement. I turned around to see if there was someone in her window, but there was not.

She was obviously talking to me!

I turned back to her, saying, "_Nombre de Dios_," stunned.

"It's no use calling on your high power," she said, dragging over a pink chair and putting one leg on either side of it. "In case you haven't noticed, He isn't paying a whole lot of attention to you. Otherwise, He wouldn't have left you to fester for,"--she looked at my clothes closer--"what is it, a hundred fifty years? Has is really been that long since you croaked?"

I stared at her, not knowing what she was talking about.

"What is...croaked?" I asked her, speaking for the first time in over a hundred years.

My voice sounded like rusted metal.

She just rolled her eyes.

She wasn't very polite for a young lady.

"Kicked the bucket. Checked out. Popped off. Bit the dust," she listed. I still had no idea what she was talking about. "Died," she said, sounding exasperated.

"Oh," I said. "Died." I shook my head. "I don't understand," I said, still astonished. "I don't understand how it is that you can see me. All these years, no one has ever--"

"Yeah," she said, cutting me off. "Well, listen, the times, you know, they are a-changin'. So what's your glitch?"

I just blinked at her. For the second time, I had no idea what she was saying.

"Glitch?" I asked her.

"Yeah," she said, clearing her throat.

I put my foot up onto a cushion on her window seat.

"Glitch. Problem," she explained. "Why are you still here? Why haven't you gone to the other side?"

I shook my head. "I don't know what you mean."

"What do you mean, you don't know what I mean?" she snapped at me, pushing some of her long dark hair from her face. "You're dead"--as if I did not know that--"You don't belong here. You're supposed to be off doing whatever it is that happens to people after they're dead. Rejoicing in heaven, or burning in hell, or being reincarnated, or ascending another plane of consciousness, or whatever. You're not supposed to be just...well, just hanging around." I just looked at her, balancing my elbow on my uplifted knee.

"And what if I happen to like just hanging around?" I asked her.

I'll admit, I was teasing her a little bit.

That was a mistake.

"Look, you can do all the hanging around you want, _amigo_. Slack away, I don't really care. But you can't do it here," she said.

"Jesse," I said, telling her the name that I had only let my mother and sisters call me.

I did not really know why I had told her my "secret" name, only that I could trust her, even though I had just met her.

"What?" she asked.

"You called me _amigo_. I thought you might like to know I have a name. It's Jesse."

She just nodded. "Right. That figures. Well, fine, Jesse, then. You can't stay here, Jesse."

I just smiled at her. "And you?" "And me what?" she asked.

"What is your name?"

We carried on in this manner until she called me a "dead cowboy".

That made me mad.

I was not a _vaquero_.

My family worked like slaves to make something of themselves in this country. I told her that, and Susannah, which was her name, grabbed my finger, hissed in my face, and threatened to break it off!

I was shocked, to say the least.

That was not what young girls did.

In my time, anyway.

She told me, again, to get out of "her room", so, I was so surprised, I dematerialized.

I have a lot to learn about the twenty-first century.

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